Without limiting the scope of the invention, its background is described in connection with the formation of fibers and yarn, as an example.
Heretofore, in this field, animal fibers have been used for the creation, formation and manipulation of yarns that are useful for the manufacture of clothing. In order to produce sufficient yarn of sufficient strength a number of yarn types have been created that take advantage of different weaves and weave patterns to produce yarns. More recently, the introduction of synthetic fibers for the production of yarn have yielded to great increases in production and the strength of fibers.
For production of wool yarn, for example, the wool fibers must be spun on worsted system or on woolen system. On a worsted system, the wool staple length is long and distribution of the length usually is extremely uneven compared to those of cotton. Wool top is virtually impossible to draft with roller drafting, mechanism. Good uniformity of product requires faller bar incorporation into the process.
If a distance between drafting rollers could be set in accordance with the longest fiber length, shorter fibers would be floated, when being drafted, while longer fibers that exceed the distance between the rollers, would be broken or cut. In the former case, fallers must be applied on gill frame to control these floating fibers.
Cotton-wool blended yarns have been spun with squared wool fiber, but all-wool yarns like worsted yarns cannot be spun by means of the conventional cotton system until now. With worsted yarns produced by the conventional worsted yarn system, long fibers of more than 120 mm length of wool top occupies only about 10% of the total. Therefore, for the purpose of uniform drafting, gilling should be used. In general, however, worsted spinning system is considered as of higher cost and lower in productivity, which results in much higher spinning costs in worsted system than in cotton system. Likewise, the creation of a yarn based on buffalo has always required that, at a minimum, a significant amount of wool be interspersed with the buffalo hair and/or fibers. At least one problem with the buffalo-wool blend is that it is more characteristic in feel, comfort and durability to wool than to buffalo.
To date, no one has been able to produce a yarn based solely on buffalo or bison hair (termed collectively herein "buffalo") at a lower cost, as well as higher productivity and good quality. Whole buffalo hair and buffalo down blended with a minimum of 40% wool fibers have long been used for providing durable, warm and comfortable protection in cold and warm weathers. A yarn based solely on buffalo hair and fibers would be expected to have similar or improved characteristics, however, the inability to produce such yarn in an efficient, cost-effective manner has not been achieved.